Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Solitude #4

I was a little concerned doing Solitude so soon after the PCP10 on Saturday but since I'm sitting in 4th place in the GC and the race is wicked fun I figured I'd HTFU and do it. Things got ugly quick. My leadout man for the sprint to the singletrack was absent and without a slingshot into the singletrack I got dropped. Actually what really happened was my legs were a little more fatigued than I thought and I just couldn't turn the cranks fast enough. I did a quick head count and estimated I was running in 12th place. I was real close to bailing out but I figured top 10 got points towards the GC so if two guys ahead crashed out or had mechanics I could still scrape together a few points. I know it sounds aweful but I'm a very emotionless thinker when I race. One guy went down on the first switchback and was slow to get going again ( I did make sure he was OK) so I got around him thinking to myself "one down one to go". Only one more unfortunate happening and I was in the points! Karma soon caught up to me when I realized my front wheel skewer was loose and my wheel was flopping all over. I stopped to tighten it and pressed on. Soon after that I saw a dude up ahead wearing the USPS Maillot Jaune. Only a roadie (or Lance) would wear that to a MTB race so I knew it was only a matter of time before he ran into problems. Sure enough he didn't have the handling skills necessary to navigate the steep loose climb across the ski run and had to walk. I rolled by him into 10th place feeling pretty good about my luck. I caught a couple other people on the road and by this time I was actually feeling kinda fast again. They both passed me on the DH and I was back to feeling slow. I caught them on the climb and felt fast again. On the second trip on the road across the top I lapped a girl and passed Denmark (he is much faster then me and raced expert but struggled last night) and by using them as a buffer held off the other dudes on the DH. I didn't ride fast but I did ride clean for a sub 53 minute time which is one of my faster times. I think I ended up in 9th or 10th place. It always pays to finish.